Who Cares?!

In the book Spontaneous Healing, Dr. Andrew Weil states, “More than negative feelings, apathy may be the major emotional obstacle to spontaneous healing.” He goes on to discuss our cultural epidemic—depression. “I experience depression as a state of high potential energy, wound up and turned inward on itself. If that energy can be accessed and moved it can be a catalyst for spontaneous healing.”

I bet that you know someone who is taking an antidepressant—maybe even you, yourself, are on a Prozac type drug. Question is—was it prescribed by a psychiatrist or simply by your gynecologist?

Granted there are people who need mood-altering drugs, but I wonder if our medical professionals aren’t just a little out of control when it comes to the way they handle people’s so called “depression.”

I have to agree with Dr. Weil who said, “…I worry about such enthusiasm for drugs that damp down passion, because I see intensity of feeling as a key to activating the healing system.”

Maybe it isn’t negative emotions that make you ill as much as it is the suppression of negative emotions, and I fear antidepressants lead to more and more suppression in general.

Lose apathy—gain passion. I applaud the “life purpose” movement.

I had the opportunity to meet a convicted murder in a Nashville prison last year. I was just visiting, thank goodness, but the prisoner I met, John, had been there for 30 years. He may never get out before he dies.

John has seen all types of criminals come and go, and he has determined that the most important and sometimes hardest thing a person can do is find their purpose. He is smart enough to know that purpose always has something to do with helping people. He said, “When you get out of self, you can move along in life.”

I have bouts with depression myself, and the only cure for me is to do like John said and “get out of self,” and I thank God, I didn’t have to sit in a 10’x10’ cell to learn that wisdom.

The little rooms in monasteries are also called cells. Our cells are what make up our bodies. Healthy cells make for a healthy person.

As a friend pointed out to me, cells eat, breathe, and eliminate. I’ve got the eating part down, but sometimes I forget to breathe, and from the looks of the stack of old boxes in the corner of my bedroom—elimination is a real issue as well.

So, as I ramble…it was something about apathy, depression, suppression, passion, and getting out of self. And, don’t forget “passion” means “to suffer.”

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This entry was posted on August 25, 2005 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Amy Hitt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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